A month back, we had our first brush with Chicago emcee Martin $ky. Armed with a smooth flow, the occasional obtuse image, and a seeming knack for crafting a charmingly blunted aesthetic, $ky’s first batch of songs felt like the Windy City’s answer to early 2000s Stones Throw; his focus was clearly on great rapping, but style pleasantly took precedence over substance, weed was largely the topic of discussion, and the honing of a vibe appeared most important of all.

While new mixtape TIME(LESS) offers much the same style as $ky’s handfull of previously released tracks (a few highlights of which appear here), it hints at the potential present in his dry wit and talented stoner allure. Songs like “Lookin Foe,” “Speak the Code,” and “Swerve” show $ky in his sweet spot, never too focused on any particular topic, touching briefly on melancholic moments, humorously understated observations (“I’m kinda killer when I scribble flows/People say they waitin’ on my album, so I’m pretty stoked”), and bong rips. As a body of work, TIME(LESS) provides a cohesive picture of a young artist, an indicator of the talent $ky already possesses that doesn’t push boundaries, but also succeeds because it doesn’t try to do too much. It does enough, a lesson to the less focused.